On Tuesday, a number of senators from the Democratic Party marched down the Capitol steps in protest to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Among them was a pastor who continues to preach at the church where Martin Luther King Jr. once lived.
“Clergy and leaders in robes, collars and religious vestments will offer prayers, sing songs, read scripture and testify to the Gospel, providing a moral reckoning at this critical moment in history,” stated an advisory publicizing the vigil that AWN Digital acquired.
“Come today in spiritual procession – singing, reading Scripture and coming for a vigil on the Senate steps,” Rev. Jim Wallis addressed the throng. Wallis advised the Obama administration on faith and local collaborations.
“Some say that we should keep faith out of politics – we’re saying while the Bible doesn’t give us detailed legislation, it tells us who to care for,” he said. “We don’t want to let Jesus Christ be left outside the Senate chamber for this vote.”
Wallis disparaged the Republican budget as a “big bad bill” that would allegedly “take 60 million [people] off of health care.”
Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) referred to Luke 10, reciting the verse where a lawyer – “and it’s always a lawyer causing trouble,” he said — questions Jesus about the characteristics of a neighbor and the right to care for them.
Coons said the Republican legislation “literally takes the food from the mouths of hungry children to pass an enormous tax cut for the very wealthiest [and] is the definition of an immoral bill before this Congress.”
During a 2017 protest in the Capitol rotunda, Warnock recalled praying and singing with William Barber II, the former North Carolina NAACP president, and said he “drew the short straw” when he was detained instead of Barber.
“As I stood there, I said then what I want to say today: That a budget is not just a fiscal document, it’s a moral document.”
If you want to know who you value and who you can go without, just show me your budget. I see. Moreover, we were present in 2017 arguing the same thing,” he said, praising the Capitol Police for their thorough handling of the arrest. Warnock related how, upon being told of impending arrest, he claimed to have “already been arrested.”
“The latest budget bill put the heartbeat of children whose food and healthcare should not be cut so that the wealthy can get a tax cut,” he stated, implying that the same was true of Republicans’ previous proposals.
“Here I am eight years later, having transformed my agitation into legislation.”
I am still able to agitate and protest, and that is why I am here today. I’m not a senator with a background in pastoral ministry. In the Senate, I serve as a preacher.
